Let's rank Florida universities on performance

Bet you have a pretty good idea of where Florida universities rank in the coaches' poll, or AP top 25.

But how do universities stack up in terms of how well their graduates perform in the workplace?

Most of us are better equipped to discuss Jimbo Fisher's play-calling or Will Muschamp's sideline bawling.

This is Florida, where football is religion and real accountability at universities is a game so new that the rule book hasn't even been written.

That's about to change.

Later this week the board that oversees Florida's 12 state universities will decide how to rank them on measures that really matter, like how much money graduates make.

This is all part of Gov. Rick Scott's push to judge universities based on statistics instead of reputations.

Scott sold himself to Florida voters as a political outsider, and this may be one area where he has succeeded in using fresh eyes to cut through longstanding mediocrity. I imagine how that conversation went:

Scott: "So, how do we decide how much money to give the universities?"

Staff: "We pretty much just write a check based on how many students they enroll."

Scott: "What about how many kids they graduate, and do they know enough to earn a decent salary?"

Staff: "No clue. But we keep great stats on red-zone turnovers and BCS appearances."

This year Scott signed a new law that divvies up $20 million to universities based on three criteria: the number of bachelor's degree grads who find a job or pursue a graduate degree, graduates' average salary and the cost of degrees.

The Board of Governors will talk about how to do that at its meeting Thursday.

And while Scott's record on higher education is far from perfect — he slashed university budgets a few years ago while insisting the institutions don't raise tuition — he has been out front in the push for more practical metrics.

President Barack Obama sounded like a Scott disciple last month when he called for universities to be rated based on performance and affordability. Eventually, Obama wants to tie federal aid to those ratings.

Scott said Obama was "late to the party."

Predictably, universities haven't taken kindly to such nosiness.

"The very notion of college is under attack from the left and the right and hit by change on every front," University of Florida President Bernie Machen groused during a speech last month. "The rise of online learning. Growing financial pressures. Open skepticism of our value."

But with more students leaving their campuses under the strain of heavy debt, it's not only logical but also long overdue that we ask universities to compete for money based on fundamentals of performance.

Even U.S. News & World Report, one of the holy grail of college rankings, is relying less on longstanding measures of greatness, such as how smart incoming students are, and more on measures such as graduation rates.

Prospective students and parents in Florida shouldn't have to rely on a magazine.

Today, students can explore the State University System website for data in the universities' annual accountability reports.

But don't look for rankings that summarize how the universities compare on costs, faculty-to-student ratios, graduate salaries and debt loads.

It should be just as easy as looking up how many touchdown passes Jameis Winston threw against Pitt.